From DE 10 2009 058 285 A1 a motor vehicle body having a front hood and a front window rising from a rear edge of the front hood is known, with which a cross member curved channel-like over its entire length forms a contact zone. The cross member supports the front window on a front edge extending in vehicle transverse direction and the lateral ends and a rear edge of the cross member are supported on structural components of the body.
When this vehicle touches a pedestrian in traffic, the latter normally crashes onto the hood from the top, wherein the pedestrian pivots about an axis which is located approximately at the front edge of the hood. With an adult pedestrian of normal size, the head in this case mostly hits the front window, passing through it and deforming the cross member located below. In a middle region, the cross member is somewhat easily yielding. For this reason, the head in an initial phase of the contact is exposed to a relatively strong deceleration when passing through the front window; this relatively easy deformability after passing through the front window allows achieving low values of the head injury criterion (HIC) during an impact in the middle of the front window.
However, when the head impacts near the ends of the cross member, their anchorage to the structural components of the body leads to a significantly higher deformation resistance and thus also to higher HIC-values.
From EP 1 810 892 B1 another motor vehicle body having a cross member that is curved channel-like over its entire length has become known. With this conventional motor vehicle, an upper side wall of the channel, against which the front window bears, and a lower side wall of the channel supported on a structural component of the body substantially extend on top of each other so that an open side of the channel faces the passenger cell. Since the upper side wall of the channel is not separately supported on a structural component, the lateral ends of this upper side wall are significantly more easily deformable under the pressure of an impact than a middle region. There is therefore the risk that the deceleration effect of the cross member during an impact on a lateral edge region of the front window is insufficient and upper and lower side wall strike against each other under the force of the impact. When this happens, extreme decelerations occur which in turn result in undesirably high HIC-values.
At least one object herein is to create a motor vehicle body that avoids an excessive dependency of the HIC-value on the location of the impact on the front window and allows achieving low HIC-values over the entire width of the front window. In addition, other objects, desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent summary and detailed description, and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background.